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Tag: Race Talk

Today was the day of The Big Half in London.First of all a massive well done to everyone who got out there and ran today. Well done to everyone who smashed a PB and to everyone who didn’t and still ran. So many people ran and so many people keep saying they had a tough race and wanted it to be over quite early on, and still they pushed on and finished. The outlook on the conditions was uncertain throughout the week and luckily the forecast was accurate that the snow in London had melted and we had a relatively usual March day of weather.

Source: thebighalf.co.uk

I had signed up a while ago with a local resident discount because my borough was one of those featured in the route. For some reason I really thought it was going to be a local race that was not going to be a really big event. Then Mo Farah was announced to be running it along with some other international professional athletes. And the name remained as The “Big” Half. And literally every single person that I follow on social media who runs, i.e. the vast majority, were also due to be running the race. With this in mind, I began to get nervous about the sheer size of the event.

I’m not too good with big crowds except for on good days. I just don’t like it. I get overwhelmed. Often there are times when the tube is too much, and rooms full of milling people are a problem, and just lots of people in a compact area are, you guessed it, a problem. Sometimes they’re not a problem at all, but I find race starts at big events particularly difficult because there’s a lot of people and you have to do bag drop, and get ready and try and go to the toilet 2-3 times in a short space of time where there are loads, maybe thousands of others doing the same, where oftentimes the queues eat into the start gun and it’s just panic central, with an extra of tears included free of charge.

Source: thebighalf.co.uk

This is something I probably need to bear in mind for future half bookings until I’m at least super comfortable with the distance so that is half the nerves dealt with already. However, The Beast from the East has brought yet another surprise perk to my life in that they are accepting virtual entries because so many people were unable to manage the travel to get to the start – because people signed up all over the country and not just in the featured boroughs as I initially thought, because it was actually a pretty huge race and not a wee little local thing – so that’s the plan. All is not lost. I’m going to cover the 13.1 miles on Wednesday and submit the Strava data on a route that I get to choose.

In the meantime I’m probably going to get a whole lot of sleep in my tank because I’ve got some form of cold battling it out with my immune system right now, and that won’t be helpful for getting myself around 13.1 miles with my legs and jelly babies alone.